Dangerous to Go Alone
by B the Blue
Summary: An old man, a cave, and a wooden sword. This is how the Legend of Zelda begins.


**Dangerous to Go Alone**

The summer storm had been raging for close to an hour. Outside the cave the wind howled, the rain fell in torrential blankets, and lightning tore through the darkness, its thunder outshouting even the cacophony of the elements. The old man had been fortunate to find this shelter before the storm's fury had reached its peak. His robes, dirty, torn, blackened and burnt, were now only damp. The small fire he had kindled in the back of his temporary shelter, the shallow solitary cave, had easily been equal to the task of drying them out. Not that it had been a particularly difficult task. The rain hadn't even had enough time to begin washing the dried blood caked to his head, let alone soak his ragged clothing through.

The old man thoughtlessly ran a hand over his bloodied hair. It would be simple enough to take advantage of the rain and get clean. The fire would do its job and dry him out, but the old man had had ample opportunities to wash himself before the storm and would likely have more after. There were plenty of small streams on the road ahead. He could wash away the dried blood from his head, even clean most of the dirt and soot from his clothing. He lowered his hand back down to his lap, resting it absently on the wooden sword that sat there. He could wash. He could clean his ragged, dirty, bloodstained self. But what was the point? It didn't seem to matter.

Though he supposed it wouldn't matter any less than building the fire had. It wasn't really any more pointless than him eating still, than him drinking still, than him traveling south, away from the village that had been his lifelong home. It wasn't any more pointless than his continued, if halfhearted, survival.

You don't give up, give in. You don't quit. Keep going. Those had once been his words. Spoken often enough to his son. Later, more often to his grandson. Once they had seemed important. Real. The truth had been so obvious in them. But now? Now they were hollow. Now his village had been burnt to the ground. His wife, his son, his son's wife, his grandson, all the people he had lived with and known for so long, were dead. Rumors had spoken of moblins dragging villagers off to become slaves while slaughtering those who remained. Whether these were true or not the old man still didn't know. Whether or not the Prince of Darkness, Ganon, required slaves he didn't know. What he did know was that the slaughter was all too real.

It had happened so fast. Like the summer storms, they rolled in, and then they were gone. The moblins had appeared as suddenly and with as little warning as such a storm, and then everything was gone. His family, his home. He remembered that there had been screaming but had taken a blow to the head almost as soon as he had left his small wooden house. He had only caught a quick glimpse of his attacker. Larger than any man he'd ever seen, with the tusked head of a wild bore, and eyes that shone with apathetic violence. You hear the stories. You repeat the rumors. But until the nightmare breaths its foul breath onto your face, you don't really know. Only then does the fear take its true form.

When he'd come to, he had found himself buried beneath the collapsed remains of what had been his home for decades. Smoke was rising from the rubble, but the flames, even at their peak, had somehow not done anything more than singe his clothing. Knocked unconscious and left for dead, but somehow mostly intact and very much alive. He was fortunate to survive.

It was a hollow fortune. Hollow like the words of encouragement he'd long preached. Hollow like his continued survival.

Had anyone besides him managed to survive the massacre, he didn't know, but if they had, no evidence of their survival existed. The only tracks leaving the village belonged to Ganon's servants and lead north. Up the winding paths toward Death Mountain.

Some of the dead he recognized, and some were too broken, too brutalized and mangled, for their corpses to resemble their living selves. He did not, was glad that he could not, recognize them. His son was not among the recognizable. Thankfully neither was his wife nor any of his brothers. His grandson, his only grandchild; however, was. The one small mercy was that his injuries had not been as visibly horrific as some he had seen. There was blood on his shirt, where he had been stabbed, but otherwise the boy looked as though he was only sleeping.

Next to his grandson lay the wooden sword that the old man had crafted himself as a present for the child's last birthday celebration. A toy for pretending, for make believe adventures in a world that had been boring and safe, for heroes that still had to be told to eat their vegetables and not to pick their nose and when to go to bed. Initially inseparable, the boy hadn't played much with the sword for the last several fortnights. His time had become more devoted toward kicking that leather ball around with his friends, in that wild and often obnoxious game that the village children had always played, and to netting the early summer butterflies as a means of impressing a girl he had come to fancy.

But it was not a leather ball or an old bug net that lay by the boy's side in the end. It was the wooden sword. Had the boy simply been in the mood for a game of pretend, before a real adventure, stark and brutal, accompanied by real monsters, had arrived? Or had he gone for the sword deliberately, an act of courage, as heroic as any deed of legend, there in the end? Coincidence or not. Courageous or not. Playing or defending. It was the same. A futile act. A hollow detail.

His grandson was dead.

Now that wooden sword sat across the old man's lap as he waited out the elements in the back of a lonely cave. He didn't remember taking it. He didn't even remember leaving the ruins of his old village. The old man assumed that he had been in shock, and even now the all consuming numbness he felt was a proclamation that his mind had not fully recovered. Maybe that was why he hadn't yet made an effort to wash himself or contemplate where specifically he was to flee. An action as simple as making a choice, not acting on rote reflex alone, but honestly expressing the overwhelmingly human capacity for free will, would shatter the hollow numbness. Maybe the old man feared that doing so would kill him, or maybe what he feared, was that it wouldn't. So he allowed his mind to remain numb, hollow. Silent.

The silence was broken by a clap of thunder, that voice of violence that only nature commands. The old man jerked in startled response, not to the echoing primal boom, but to what the flashing lightning had revealed seconds before.

If his numbness still remained, his solitude did not. Another had entered the cave.

The old man had been alone for days. Had any larger towns been near his village he likely would have encountered refugees fleeing from their own nightmares, but his village had been nothing if not isolated. He knew from merchants that the nearest villages over were weeks away. Who was this stranger? If he was a highwayman then he'd have little prey this far away from any larger settlements. Highwayman or not, once the old man's initial surprise abated he found himself unconcerned. He had nothing worth taking. No rupees, no food, burnt and ragged clothing, a hollow life. The wooden sword.

His grandson's sword.

The old man's knuckles clenched down in unexpected desperation. His heart pounded and head swam with the sudden rush of adrenaline. It hurt. The hollow was threatened and the numbness was giving way to pain.

As the stranger's silhouette entered the perimeter of the fire's glow, the old man opened his mouth to shout. The attempted warning manifested as a dry crack, as feeble and fearceless as the man it came from.

The stranger sat down across the fire and tossed a small water-skin onto the old man's lap. "Plenty of water to go around. Too much really. I guess its not really a fair trade for borrowing your fire. I'll leave a rupee when I leave. Shouldn't be too long now. The storm's blowing west at a good rate. Nasty to get caught in though."

Not a highwayman then. The old man loosened his grip on the wooden sword and hesitantly, deliberately, picked up the skin. Now acutely aware of how raw and parched his throat was, he took a slow swallow. It was good. Coughing, he paused before drinking again, longer and deeper, leaving the small skin drained. The old man stared at the newcomer. His mind was still fogged over from the days of non-use, but curiosity was winning out against hollow apathy.

The stranger was a young man, barely more than a boy really, maybe only a few years older than his grandson had been. His hair was long, brown and unkempt. His eyes a rare shade of grey-blue, betraying an intelligence and disciplined observance that seemed in contrast to his youth.

The young man pulled a sopping green hat, long and conical, off his head, wrung it out and sat it near the fire. The hat was shortly followed by a wide leather belt, which once undone allowed him to pull off his forest green tunic. Stepping aside to wring the larger article out by the cave's wall, he returned to his spot by the fire and lay the tunic flat in front of him. Underneath the tunic the young man wore a simple set of leather armors. He was traveling light, having just a small pack of supplies and a shield, wood and leather, inscribed with a foreign symbol. A cross of red dyed leather rather than the popular Triforce iconography the old man had expected to see.

No, maybe not a highwayman, but not a fellow refugee either. This wasn't someone wandering the wilderness after having lost their home, rather he seemed to be comfortably at ease, even soaking wet inside of a dirty cave. The old man had met similar men before. Their homes had no walls, no roof or bed. Their home was the road and the wild. A traveler of some sort then, what the dirty faced village children romanticized as 'adventurers', but surely not a mercenary at such a young age.

As the stranger removed traveling rations from his pack, salted jerky and hardtack, the old man stared with intense curiosity. Even more interesting than the stranger's youth, unique clothing, and foreigner's shield, were his ears. Tall and pointed, the unmistakable mark of old Hylian blood. Over the centuries the trait had faded, but the old man's grandfather had had ears like that. In his village they called them 'proud ears', and whispered awed stories of how they could hear the singing of the gods. They had been a constant source of intrigue for him in his childhood. Though in a small country village proud ears cropped up only every few generations, it was said that the Hylian royal family, and those of the ancient bloodline of the Hylian Knights still had them more often than not.

Could this boy actually be one of the Hylian Knights, a member of a group so steeped in myth that even to this day they were considered to be living legends of a bygone age? If so, why did his shield not bear the royal crest? Where was his sword?

"Are you a knight? A Hylian Knight?" The old man heard himself say, in a voice so thin and ragged that he only just recognized it as his own.

The youth smiled and passed the old man a portion of the food he'd retrieved. "No. I traveled from across the sea. Landed to the southeast more than two months ago, and from there I made my way north into Hyrule. Until I arrived I hadn't really believed the rumors about the war. Guess I should have."

The old man nodded. Young for an adventurer, but it did make more sense than the youth being a knight. "Why stay then. It would be far wiser to turn back the way you came. All that lays north is Death Mountain, home of Ganon the great demon king. Turn back while you still have a chance."

The youth responded with a single snort of laughter. "Demon King. Prince of Darkness. Personally I think Baron of Butchery would be a better title. Demote the beast and give him a more accurate and far less romantic moniker."

"That name would indeed fit," the old man agreed.

"I've heard endless stories, most at least partially unbelievable. I'm not even sure what Ganon is. Some kind of moblin seems the most likely."

"Evil," the old man said. "An ancient evil once contained safely within legend. They say he was once a man, the tales change, many claim he was a Son-King of the Gerudo peoples."

The youth nodded as he tore a bite of jerky off with his teeth. Swallowing he said, "Whoever he was, and whatever he is. I'm going to kill him."

The old man marveled at the matter-of-fact way the youth stated what could only be nonsense. Was his first impression of the stranger wrong? Was he less in control and at home in the wilderness than he appeared? Was this young man, this boy, nothing more than a feral lunatic?

Or was he not only serious but every bit as sane as he appeared to be.

"Tell me boy, who are you? Did you lie about being a knight, or are you simply mad?" the old man spoke his question before taking a bite of hardtack biscuit.

"My name is Link, and neither," replied the youth, "but if I'm being perfectly honest, I guess you could call me an agent of the throne. Though this is a recent development, what I said before was true, I'd never been in Hyrule until now."

"The throne has fallen," replied the old man. "The King fell in combat, the Triforces of Power and Wisdom have been taken by the enemy, and the Princess Zelda is captured."

The dark rumors had reached his small village some time ago, but until the moblin attack the old man had not believed them. Yes, Hyrule was at war, but surely things weren't as dire as the rumor mongering merchants claimed. Surely the King wasn't really dead, the heir Zelda and the Golden Power of Hyrule not in the enemy's hands. Now the old man believed. Moblin armies did terrorize the countryside, and Ganon was more than a myth, more than a story to frighten the wide eyed children around the safety of the hearth. The once proud Kingdom of Hyrule had all but fallen to ruin.

"True on most accounts, but not all. Ganon did kill the King and steal the Triforce of Power some time ago, and more recently the Princess Zelda was captured." Link paused for another bite and washed it down with a drink from a second water skin. "But she wasn't caught unprepared. Before Ganon took the castle Her Highness shattered the Triforce of Wisdom into eight pieces and hid them from his Dark Princeliness. Then she gave her most trusted confidant the oh so very important mission of finding the Hero of Prophesy." The youth paused again and with a dramatic flourish of his arms finished, "And here I am. Legendary Hero in the flesh and at your service."

The old man scratched his chin through his thick unkempt beard. The Legendary Hero. The Hero of Prophesy. Yet another fireside story. When had he begun feeling so weary? Not hollow and empty, but drained and weak. "Do you actually believe this? That you are the Hero of Prophesy in a land you've only just come to know, of a kingdom which you are nothing but a stranger in?"

Link smiled and the glint in his eyes told that he was well aware of how crazy he sounded. "I don't know, but Impa, that's the Princess's handmaid and confidant I mentioned, seemed pretty convinced. True, she was desperate, still I don't think she was crazy or deluded. The thing is, I don't care if she's right or wrong. I don't put much stock in prophesy, but I aim on following through with the mission she charged me with.

"I will restore the Triforce of Wisdom and use its power to kill Ganon, to retrieve the Triforce of Power from him, and restore Zelda to the throne."

The old man chewed a hard scrap of jerky in silence as he considered the youth's, the barely more than a boy, Link's, words. He truly didn't seem crazy, but everything he said almost certainly was. The Triforce of Wisdom both shattered and scattered, by the hands of Zelda herself, across the land. The Hero of Prophesy arrived not only from legend but from a foreign land, here to challenge the Prince of Darkness and save Hyrule.

"If you hold no stock in prophesy, why accept this Impa's charge? She may not even be who she claimed, and even if she is, why take on an impossible task, why throw away your life? Ganon is death incarnate; you're still young, flee back to your homeland if you have one, or anywhere that is not our doomed kingdom. Don't give the Demon King yet another stolen life. Flee and keep your own."

"I've been on the road since my earliest memories. I travel and adventure, and I am never tempted to stop. Do you know why?" The old man shook his head in response to Link's question. "Because on the road I am free. My travels are an expression of my freedom, which I cherish above all else, and if I flee I risk losing not my life but my freedom. Ganon has the Triforce of Power, and while Hyrule's armies still fight on, they are falling, and soon will be wholly conquered. After that Ganon will act like all other tyrants before him and expand. His dark empire will spread outward until Hyrule is but the tiniest piece of his shadow. I would not then be traveling of my own accord, not choosing my path freely, but fleeing in response to another's will. Whether or not I believe in Hyrule's prophesy then is irrelevant. I have seen enough here to become convinced of the terrible threat that Ganon represents. If he is not stopped I will come to lose my freedom, if not eventually my life as well. Someone must stop him. Maybe I'm not the Legendary Hero, or maybe I am. Either way I have more trust in my own abilities than those of others."

Link was not crazy, not a feral child, nor a deluded fool. As he spoke the old man watched his mannerisms and listened to his words. Link spoke confidently from a place of reason and courage. The old man detected no lies in his words.

"Why tell me all this? How do you know I'm not one of the enemy's spies."

Link shrugged. "I'm pretty sure that your not, but even if you were, I haven't said anything that Ganon doesn't already know. He's both aware and furious with Zelda's actions with the Triforce. He knows that I came to Impa's aid and that she believes me to be the Hero of Prophesy. He surely knows more about what that means than I do. Ganon knows my intent to restore the Triforce he's been denied, knows that I'm coming for him and that I aim to kill him. If you are a spy, I've told you nothing of true value. But like I said, I've always been a decent judge of character, and you my friend are no spy."

"And you my young friend, don't even have a sword," the old man responded. "If you accomplish even half of what you intend your feats will be truly legendary. Do you honestly plan on challenging the Prince of Darkness alone and ill-equipped?"

Outside the rain had stopped and the thunder only echoed from a great distance. The storm had passed.

With a smile Link stood and pulled his now dry tunic back over his head, re-strapped his leather belt, and donned his conical hat. His fingers pulled on a loop of iron on his belt, judging from its shape and placement, it was meant to hold a now absent sword. "My recent loss was unfortunate. I was pretty fond of that blade, but even without it, I'll fight tooth and nail, literally if need be, eventually I _will_ find another sword. This kingdom is at war after all, and I'm sure there's no shortage of steel to be found. I'll be more than happy to demonstrate my skills to the enemy once I've another blade, though I doubt they'll be nearly as thrilled.

"And going alone won't be a problem. An army would only lead Ganon's forces straight to me. By myself I can move swiftly and without notice, take on the enemy on my own terms." Link fished an emerald hued rupee from his supplies. Tossed it to the old man, and shouldered his pack. "I have no idea what horrors you've been through, and I know I can't offer any words of comfort that could help in a meaningful way, but if you head west from here you should reach a river. Follow it south until you reach a bridge. Following that road will eventually take you to a decent sized town that hasn't yet been molested by Ganon's forces. For now its still safe, as safe as anywhere in Hyrule can be that is. Take care and thanks for the fire."

Link turned and started toward the cave's mouth. Alone but unafraid. Unarmed yet fiercely confident. The old man's thoughts turned once again toward the wooden sword still cradled in his arms. His gnarled fingers traced its outline, remembering its grain, how he had carved, oiled, and polished it himself. How he had given it to his only grandson.

It was solid oak. Heavy, sturdy, strong. But in his grandson's hands it had been little more than a stick, a toy and nothing more. In his hands now, it was even less. A symbol of futility. A hollow connection to the memories and pain he had been too cowardly to yet face.

But in the hands of another...

...In the hands of the courageous youth who'd just shared a meal with a ragged old refugee, a wretch found in a cave. In Link's hands what would it be? What could it be? Not a toy. But maybe a true weapon.

"Wait," the old man called, as Link stopped and turned back to face him, the old man stood and walked forward. "Maybe you're right, maybe an army would only slow you and hinder your quest, but..." The old man paused to cough, then held the wooden sword out in front of him. "It's dangerous to go alone. Take this. It's no substitute for a real blade, I'm sure, but it will probably serve you better than a fallen tree branch. At least until you're able to find a real sword."

Link gave the old man an appraising look, then lowered his eyes to the sword. Carefully, as though the sword's blade was sharpened steel and not dull oak, he took it from the old man's outstretched hands. Stepping backwards, until the old man was safely out of range, he gave the wooden sword a few test swings, gauging its weight and balance. Then with a sudden shout, the practiced unashamed bark of a seasoned warrior, he violently thrust the sword out, stabbing the open cave air.

The old man watched as Link battled an enemy that wasn't there. His skills, even with what amounted to an unbalanced club, crafted by an old country farmer, were as formidable as he'd earlier implied. The old man smiled as he watched. Link wielded the sword with his left hand, the same hand his grandson had favored.

Finishing, Link grinned and pushed the wooden blade down into the iron loop at his belt's right side, officially replacing whatever sword he had lost. "Much better than a tree branch. You have my sincerest thanks, and I promise to put this fine weapon to good use."

The old man watched as the youth departed. Had he actually just met the Hero of Prophesy? He had never honestly believed in the legends, but if he had to believe in Ganon, and life had left him no choice in that, then he decided he would believe in the other legends too.

He would believe in the storied wisdom of Princess Zelda. He would believe in her trust in the handmaid Impa. He would believe in the Hero of Prophesy.

He would believe in Link.

The old man stepped out of the cave and let go of the hollow abyss he'd cloaked himself in. With a torn wretched wail, he dropped to his knees, and allowed the pain and reality to crash down around him, a storm from which there was no cave for shelter. A storm that would never fully pass.

The old man then stood and did the single hardest thing he'd ever done. He made a choice. Choosing to step forward, he followed the directions Link had given him. He would make his way back to civilization. He would carry his pain with him always, but others were suffering just as much. He would not be a hollow refugee, but would help those who were, those who needed it most. If this pain was the cost of living, then he would pay it and live.

He would not give up, give in. He would not quit. He would keep going. Even if it was painful, even if it was dangerous, even if he was alone. He would live. He would live and do more even than that.

He would live free.

* * *

 _Author's Notes:_

 _A while ago I wrote a short fanfic based on the SNES game Actraiser, where I basically re-imagined the game's introductory level and added more context and mythology to it. Since then I've had the idea to give a similar treatment to various other old video games. Foremost among these was the original Legend of Zelda. In the beginning 30 or so seconds of that game you enter a cave where an old man declares, "It's dangerous to go alone! Take this." and you receive a wooden sword to start out your adventure._

 _The bare bones simplicity of an opening like this was perfect for a re-imagining, where I was free to add in whatever narrative details I wished._

 _While I tried to stay as true to the original mythology as I could, I'm sure I've interpreted more than a few things a bit differently than expected. Firstly, Link's age seemed a bit ambiguous to me. I always saw the early artwork and his Saturday morning cartoon representations and imagined Link in the original to be the "adult" or teenage Link we've come to know, rather than the child Link who's appeared in more than a few games since then, but in recent years Shigeru Miyamoto has been quoted to say that Link was only 10 in the original and 16 in the first sequel. Giving an age change that roughly equates to the later made game "Ocarina of Time"._

 _Due to how I've always imagined Link in the original (an adult not a child), I couldn't bring myself to portray him in a way I personally feel is basically a twenty year late soft retcon. Also there's been contradicting ages given by heads of Nintendo to the Ocarina of Time iterations, so I don't take these age estimates to be hard canon._

 _Because of this I purposefully tried to make Link's age a wee bit ambiguous while not de-aging him completely down to a child. I tried to portray him as a young teen that could reasonably be anywhere from 12 to 15 if you were to look at him and attempt to guess._

 _I chose to have Link's hair be brown rather than the more common blond he's come to have, based on the early Legend of Zelda concept art. His eyes were a bit more tricky. In a lot of art they look dark, but in some newer art made later, but for the original Zeldas they're back to looking kind of blue. So I gave up trying to guess and gave him grey blue eyes that could potentially change hues. I also kept his shield marked with the original cross rather than the later Hylian style shields the series has made famous. This made sense with his back story as an adventurer from a distant land._

 _Perhaps the most radical change I made to his appearance is replacing his plain brown cloth underclothes with leather armor. I've always liked how later Zelda games gave Link an undercoat of chain mail, but with the brown color scheme of the original Link's underclothing I thought maybe leather armor might be a possibility. I do like the idea, but admit its the biggest change made to straight canon. I'd be interested in feedback on whether or not this played well, and might change it in a later draft._

 _I chose the title Hero of Prophesy, over the more generic term Hero of Legend, because I've always liked the games where Link is given a specific unique title. Think, The Hero of Time or The Hero of Winds. After A Link to the Past, Hyrule is said to have entered a golden age which ended sometime before the NES games, so I imagined that during this long stretch of time a heroic version of Link may not have cropped up to save the world due to the long era of relative peace. During this time a title like The Hero of Prophesy may have been used when predicting how the legendary hero would return in a time of great need._

 _After the events in Zelda II its possible people may end up referring to this Link as The Hero of Courage, due to his retrieval of the long lost third piece of the Triforce, but until he earns that specific title I liked the sound of Hero of Prophesy._

 _Speaking of events taking place after Zelda II's ending. I'm currently starting a long original story taking place in that era. A sequel to the original NES games. I love the idea of there being two different Zeldas in a single story, which would be the case once Link awakens the sleeping Zelda with the Triforce of Courage. Beyond that there's so much mythology that's been added to the series in the games made since then._

 _I plan on making use of ideas ranging from the Master Sword and Fi, the twilight realm, Lorule, great faeries, the Gerudo and Zora peoples. I even have some unique ideas on how to incorporate such famous relics as the Ocarina of Time, the Four Sword, and the Wind Waker into the overall plot, in ways that I feel work really well and aren't just throw away fan service. Not to mention completely original ideas of my own relating to the overall mythos._

 _If any of that sounds interesting to you, please look forward to my upcoming Legend of Zelda epic:_ **The** **Triforce of Ruin**.


End file.
